PY 101 – 012

Monday, February 3, 2016

Week 4, Day 2 Notes

Attachment Styles & How children learn about the world

Quizlet: https://quizlet.com/_1zj0dw

Attachment styles

  • How a child responds to a caregiver leaving and coming back
    • See vocab
  • Attachment is a complex developmental phenomenon
    • ooBoth parent and child contribute to the success of interactions
  • Research shows that secure attachment children have better social functioning
  • Insecure attachment have trouble adjusting to school
    • ooLinked to depression
    • ooDifficulty coping with trauma
    • ooDifficulty coping with pain
    • ooBehavioral problems
      • Might get in more fights
      • More likely to get in trouble
    • ooImportant to note
      • Not necessarily an absolute statement it’s a relative possibility

Chemistry of Attachment

  • Role of oxytocin in bonding
    • ooMaternal tendencies
    • ooFeeling of social acceptance
    • ooSexual gratification
  • Infant sucking during nursing releases oxytocin in the mother
    • ooNot sexual
  • Phenomena appear to be completely social in nature have biological influences

Do other species have attachment styles?

  • Yes in a way

    • oo Imprinting

Harlow and his monkeys

  • Tested whether baby rhesus monkeys would likely form attachment to a mother that provided food vs a mother who provided comfort
  • Findings showed that the monkeys preferred the “mother” made out of cloth

    • oo Contact comfort

  • Both sets of monkeys however, did not have certain social skills by not having a real monkey parent
  • Also shows insight into physical abuse in relationships
    • ooIf your parent is abusive, you might treat your children the same way because it’s what you learned

Chapter 9 (Part 2)

How Do Children Learn About the World?

  • Piaget
  • ow empathy influences reasoning

Piaget’s Stages of Cognitive Development

  • Developed theory that children go through four stages of development
    • oo1 sensorimotor
    • oo2 preoperational
    • oo3 concrete operational
    • oo4 formal operational

Sensorimotor Stage

  • Infants acquire information about the world through senses and motor skills
    • ooSense of agency
      • Realize they can move objects in the world
    • ooDevelop first schemas
  • According to Piaget, it is important to learn object permanence in this stage
  • Object permanence helps in differentiation from objects and aids in attachment
    • ooKnows a novel object from an old object
    • ooKnowing that a parent will not be gone forever after leaving the room

Preoperational Stage

  • During this stage, children think symbolically about objects and use language, but they reason based on intuition and superficial appearance rather than logic
    • ooDon’t understand the law of conservation of quantity
      • Even if a substance’s appearance changes, it’s quantity may remain unchanged
  • Key limitations
    • oo Centration
    • oo Egocentrism
  • Children’s “immature” skills might not be so limiting
    • ooMore limited than adults but beneficial during development
      • Egocentrism
        • More observant
          • elps children take more note of what’s going on around them
      • May learn more about how their own minds and bodies interact with the world

Concrete Operational Stage

  • Children begin to think and understand logical operations and are no longer fooled by appearances
    • ooUnderstanding operations is a key step
  • According to Piaget, the ability to understand that an action is reversible enables children to begin to understand concepts such as conservation of quantity
  • Still limited reasoning about concrete things (objects they can interact with)
  • Children in this stage are more logical

Formal Operational Stage

People can think abstractly, and can formulate and test hypotheses through logic

Piaget found that adolescents can form hypotheses and systematically test them

Challenges to Piaget’s Theory

  • It’s inflexible
    • ooEveryone is different
    • ooDoesn’t take cultural differences into account
  • Different areas in the brain are responsible for different skills
    • ooDevelopment does not follow strict and uniform stages
    • ooMany adults continue to reason in concrete operational ways
      • You don’t eliminate your concrete operational observations
        • Ex. Trying to learn to play basketball

Moral Reasoning and Moral Emotions

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